At a meeting in Avignon, Marine Le Pen calls to "block" Emmanuel Macron

AFP with Mélanie Faure 8:55 p.m., April 14, 2022

RN presidential candidate Marine Le Pen called on Thursday to "block" Emmanuel Macron and "this caste which governs us with arrogance", presenting herself as the candidate of the "people against the oligarchy" during her first between-two-rounds meeting in Avignon.

"On April 24, if the French have to block it is the return of Emmanuel Macron", launched the far-right candidate, in a red jacket, in front of a room of some 4,000 activists according to the organizers.

In an anaphora, Marine Le Pen called for "blocking a new five-year term of social desolation and national deconstruction", to "block this caste which governs us with arrogance, this power of a few for the benefit of a few. together, this power of interpersonality where co-optation and nepotism reign, perfectly illustrated by business, MSC, McKinsey and of course Alstom".

She castigated a "quinquennium of contempt and unnecessary tension", criticizing certain expressions of the outgoing president as "those who are nothing".

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"These words are of a terrible symbolic violence. These are the words of a power without empathy which supposes a relationship with the people considered as a balance of power, as competition and even in opposition of all against all, as the crushing of the weak", she judged.

"This meeting of April 24 puts the popular bloc against the elite bloc face to face," she said again, using terminology from political scientist Jérôme Sainte-Marie, very listened to by the far right.

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The presidential opposes "the block of those attached to Social Security, against the block of those attached to the power of money" and the "people against the oligarchy", she launched.

"Protection is health! And I will reinstate the 15,000 caregivers expelled as unclean and I will pay them the salaries they were unjustly deprived of," she promised. 

She also defended the popular initiative referendum to "give substance to the legitimate demands of unjustly repressed street movements such as the Yellow Vests".

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The RN candidate again addressed "patriots on the right, on the left or elsewhere", while the electorate of the rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon is very coveted.

Marine Le Pen holds this meeting in Avignon, a city which had placed Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the lead in the first round, but in a department of Vaucluse very favorable to the RN.

An hour before the candidate took the floor, some 200 to 300 people marched through Avignon to express their rejection of the far right.

"Down with the National Front, F for Fascists, N for Nazis," shouted the demonstrators holding flags of the South or Solidarity unions, Antifascist Action and even Ukraine.